Might as well finish both parts of the story.

The next time Mom got the stool and the shampoo, I took the upper hand.

“Don’t do it like last time.”

She looked at me blankly.

“Remember? When you made my head bleed?”

She stiffened. “That’s how my mother washed my hair.”

I remember the feeling, like the floor had sunk. “Doomed!” rattled in my head. If this was what she knew, this was all she knew.

The “Doomed” was because it wasn’t just Mom.

A few months earlier, it had snowed, which was rare in eastern Pennsylvania. Dad decided to go skiing on the golf course at the end of the road across the street.

He must have been drunk or on a bipolar high, but he took me with him, bundled in my powder-blue snowsuit with the little bunny embroidered over my heart.

I remember nothing about how we got to the golf course. All I remember is standing beside him on a small snowy hill as he stepped his ski-booted feet into the bindings of his long, skinny black skis. I remember thinking the bindings were interesting contraptions and that his skis were shiny.

He told me to stand behind him on the back of his skis and hang on.

I fell off immediately.

He told me to hold on to his belt, but as I reached my hands up under his jacket to find his belt, he took off and I fell again.

He yelled at me to stay on, to hold on tight. This time when I fell, my face hit the cold metal of the binding that held the heel of his boot. When I took my hand away from my face, it was bloody.

Dad scowled and yelled, “Go home!”

“Where is it? I can’t see it!” I wailed.

He stuck his arm out straight. “Go that way. Straight. Walk over one hill and then the second hill. Then you’ll see the road. Walk down the road until you see our house.”

It seemed like a lot to remember, but I looked at his arm and took a step forward. He skied off. I looked into the white. It was blurry.

When I crested the first hill, I got afraid. I couldn’t see any houses! But I reminded myself he had said there were two hills. “Walk straight!” I told myself, hoping I was, hoping I wasn’t walking in circles.

At the crest of the second hill, there was the road, not too far away. I still couldn’t see our house, but at least there was the road.

When I got to our driveway, Mom came running out of the house, not even wearing her coat. She was looking at my snowsuit.

I looked down and saw a giant blotch of red, from the bunny all the way to my stomach. I was afraid I would get in trouble for bleeding on my snowsuit, but I didn’t.

Because I learned early that they could both hurt me, I became more aware of their emotions than my own. I learned to stay out of their way, hide in my room, disappear into books.

When I get afraid now, the part of me that is afraid is most often that 4-year-old little girl.

I do what neither of my parents did. I hold her (by wrapping my arms tightly across my midsection). I tell her it’s okay, she doesn’t have to be brave, I’ll take care of her.

I tell her I love her.

PS: On one trip to New Jersey, I drove to the old house. I wanted to see if my childhood memory had made the distance I walked seem much farther than it was.

There were men on the golf course, and they eyed me, probably wondering what I was doing there without clubs. I didn’t care. I wanted to know and now I do.

Chewing the Cud of Good

Thankful for Elaine’s therapy buddy that I used to hold close when we talked about hard things.